(FT) Will Trump Make Ships Great Again?
- Admin
- Mar 24
- 1 min read
Shipbuilding and maritime security will be all over the news this week. Today, the US Trade Representative will hold hearings on proposed interventions to support the US shipbuilding industry, which both the Trump administrations (and the Biden administration) believe have been unfairly hit by Chinese mercantilism. While some of the groups testifying (including a number of private businesses, foreign companies and state actors) will try to argue that the state supports being proposed by the Trump administration are illegal or unwarranted, I don’t think it will make much of a difference. Shipbuilding is where Trump will put his industrial policy stake in the ground.
Indeed, I’ve been told by sources in or near the White House that the president’s new executive order on shipbuilding may drop as early as the end of this week. (In my column today I wrote about how the administration’s efforts to build more maritime security are part of a new Great Game in the Arctic). A leaked copy of the order was floating around last week, and it includes some pretty ambitious, whole of government goals to reconnect military and commercial shipbuilding. They included beefing up training for the maritime workforce (which has dwindled in the US), penalising adversaries like China with port fees and other restrictions, and also rewarding companies and countries that support US flagged vessels and American shipbuilding efforts.
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